1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods for controlling for a device with gestures. More particularly, the present invention relates to methods for calibrating the device to detect knocking gestures against a surface. Even more particularly, the present invention relates to methods for forming the gesture profiles associated with commands with manual or calibrated factors.
2. Description of Related Art Including Information Disclosed Under 37 CFR 1.97 and 37 CFR 1.98
With the development of electronic technology, products used daily are increasingly integrated with interactive features aiming to enhance the convenience of using them. Users now can use a controller, such as a remote, to adjust lights, curtains, a thermostat etc. An existing control method is a distinct remote controller associated with the output device to be controlled. Another existing control method is voice recognition technology. Voice recognition programs calibration to various pronunciations and particular accents. Furthermore, voice recognition is often impaired by background noise resulting in difficulties for the system to recognize commands.
Another recent controller system innovation is to build a control directly into the objects and structures in a person's surroundings. For example, computer tablets, touchscreen, and touchpads have begun to be integrated into furniture including built-in functions to control smart-devices around a home, business, or other environment. Smart tables have been built with touch-enabled screens that are able to receive touch-based gestures, and even computer touch-pads have become equipped with more advanced touch gesture vocabularies to interpret various touch-based motions associated to specific commands. These touch enabled screens and touch-pads are confined to a particular area dedicated as a touch surface area of the structure's surface.
Various patents and publications are available in the field of control interfaces based on hand or finger motions. U.S. Pat. No. 8,788,978, issued to Stedman et al on Jul. 22, 2014, teaches another gesture sensitive interface for a computer. The “pinch zoom” functionality is the subject matter, so that the detection of first and second interaction points, and the relative motion between the points are detected by sensors.
World Intellectual Property Organization Publication No. WO2013165348, published for Bess on Nov. 7, 2013, describes a system with at least three accelerometers disposed in different locations of an area with a surface to capture respective vibration data corresponding to a command tapped onto the surface by a user. A processing system receives the vibration data from each accelerometer, identifying the command and a location of the user from the vibration data. A control signal based on the command and the location is generated.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 20140225824, published for Shpunt et al on Aug. 14, 2014, discloses flexible room controls. A control apparatus includes a projector for directing first light toward a scene that includes a hand of a user in proximity to a wall of a room and to receive the first light that is reflected from the scene, and to direct second light toward the wall so as to project an image of a control device onto the wall. A processor detects hand motions within the projected field.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 20120249416, published for Maciocci et al on Oct. 4, 2012, describes another projection system with gesture identification. The projector is a unit worn on the body of the user to project onto surfaces, such as walls and tables. Spatial data is detected by a sensor array. Additional rendering operations may include tracking movements of the recognized body parts, applying a detection algorithm to the tracked movements to detect a predetermined gesture, applying a command corresponding to the detected predetermined gesture, and updating the projected images in response to the applied command.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 20100019922, published for Van Loenen on Jan. 28, 2010, is the known prior art for an interactive surface by tapping. Sound detection is filtered and interpreted either in the system to be controlled or else in the sensors themselves. The direction of movement of a hand stroking the surface can be interpreted as a command to increase or decrease a parameter, such as the sound volume level of a television, for example. Determination of the position of the user's hand is unnecessary.
For a prior art touch screen or touch pad device, there is a discrete boundary or differentiation between the touch and non-touch areas of a surface. A touch-sensitive region can be bound by the outer edge of a screen or touchpad that is integrated in the surface. Therefore, a command is often processed the moment a contact interaction occurs between a person's hand and the touchpad or touchscreen of an activated device. For a prior art light detection device, there is a discrete boundary of visible light. Only gestures within the field of projected light and only gestures made, when the project light is activated, are processed within the control system for commands of the terminal output.
For other control interface systems, an exterior surface is converted into an interactive zone for contact interactions, such that there is no longer a discrete boundary between touch and non-touch areas of the exterior surface. For example, when a bed is an exterior surface overlaid by an interactive zone, the entire bed generates data signals to be converted into a gesture. For example, a light projection on a wall forms an interactive zone, and the entire wall generates signals as any portion of the wall can reflect light back to a receiver. The hand of the user, the foot of the user, or a pet generates contact interactions within the system. For these control interface systems, there must be a way to distinguish gestures for association with commands and extraneous touches, motions, vibrations, or other physical parameters affecting the surface that are unrelated to gestures for the processing by the system. Voice recognition technology must be able to filter background noise in order to identify verbal commands from the user. Similarly, there is a need to filter background touches, motions, vibrations or other physical parameters in order to identify the gestures as commands from the user.
There are also control interface systems including a housing placed on a mounting surface, a sensor contained within the housing, a routing module connected to the sensor, a processing module connected to the routing module, and an output module connected to the processing module. The sensor forms an interactive zone defined by a range of the sensor, and the interactive zone is coordinated or aligned with the mounting surface. A contact interaction within the interactive zone is an event detected by the sensor and corresponds to a data signal. The event or contact interaction can be a knocking gesture, when the user physically engages in the interactive zone. The sensor detects the contact interaction and generates a corresponding data signal. The data signals are transmitted by the sensor as data inputs to the routing module. The routing module receives each data input from the sensor, and the processing module receives each data input from the routing module. The processing module will convert each data input into a detected profile and match the detected profile with a gesture profile. Since each gesture profile is associated with a command, the processing module transmits the command corresponding to the gesture profile matched to the detected profile to the output module.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method for controlling a sensor of a system which controls a terminal device.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method for controlling the resting status and listening status of a sensor so as to regulate power consumption.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method for activating the sensor of a control system with gestures.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method for activating the sensor for control system with gestures and controlling terminal devices with the control system with gestures.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a method for forming commands to control the system based on knocking gestures and forming subsequent commands to control a terminal device based on knocking gestures.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an embodiment of the method for forming status commands and output commands.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an embodiment of the method for forming commands based on two memory sets of commands.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide an embodiment of the method for status commands for controlling a resting status and listening status of the sensor of the device as one memory set and commands for terminal devices as another memory set.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an embodiment of the method for calibrating the commands based on associations of each command and a corresponding gesture profile set by manual data input.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an embodiment of the method for calibrating the commands by setting the gesture profiles with various factors, such as sensitivity, surface selection, and threshold.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an embodiment of the method for calibrating the commands by setting the gesture profiles by calibrating contact interactions and corresponding calibrating data signals.
These and other objectives and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from a reading of the attached specification.